


Homecomings

by Systlin



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 13:06:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3327854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Systlin/pseuds/Systlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elissa returns home, cure in hand. Predictable sexytimes happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecomings

“Your majesty.” Marron still seemed slightly shell-shocked as he trailed after Elissa as she strode out of the stables and up the slight rise to the nearest door, which happened to be the back entrance that led through the kitchens. Two other junior guards trailed after him, looking just as stunned and confused. “I sent one of my boys to wake the King. Can…is there anything else you require, my lady?”

  
“No. Just my husband.” Elissa shoved the door open and swept through the kitchens. The head cook was already up and about, and she straightened up from where she was supervising the junior staff kneading bread dough. The older woman’s chest expanded as she prepared to give the impudent guards intruding in her kitchens a tongue-lashing. Elissa vaguely saw recognition dawn as she strode past the woman, and a kind of shocked squawk was the only sound she got out. “And my son.”

  
She was halfway across the mess hall when the opposite door slammed open, and a disheveled, bleary-eyed, and barely halfway-dressed King of Ferelden came streaking through.  
He stopped dead when he saw her. Elissa felt a lump rise in her throat, and she choked back a sob.

  
“Hello.” The word came out as a dry rasp, and she faltered, because it was him, the same beloved face, and what did she say? _I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long, but I found it, and oh I might have started a Gray Warden civil war, but I missed you, and oh, but it’s good to see you again._

  
In battle, Alistair had always been a human battering ram. He was a big man, strong and muscular, and she’d seen him lower his shield and charge straight into combat without so much as flinching too many times to count. He never seemed to care what was in his way; hurlocks, deep stalkers, genlocks, dragonlings, ogres, high dragons…she’d seen him flatten three hurlocks once as if they hadn’t even been there, and it had hardly slowed him.

  
There were a dozen chairs and a table between his place in the door and her. He crashed right through the lot as if he didn’t even notice them, sending chairs tumbling and vaulting clean over the table. And then he was holding her, lifting her clean off her feet for a moment even though she was wearing fifty pounds of armor, to crush her against his chest and bury his face against her neck.  
Elissa’s helmet hit the ground with a clank as her arms went around his neck, and oh, Maker help her, but he smelled the same, he felt the same, and then all she could do was to cling to him with fierce desperation, bury her face against his bare chest, and sob. So she did.

  
“Lyssa.” He was murmuring her name against her neck, into her hair, and if she hadn’t been wearing armor his arms around her would have been tight enough to make her ribs creak. “ _Lyssa_.” He was crying too, she realized as she felt something hot and wet where his face was pressed against her skin.

  
“I’m sorry.” She said this into his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would take so long. I missed…”

  
He pulled away, cupped a hand under her chin to tilt her face up, and cut off the rest of her words with a kiss.

  
Elissa forgot what she’d been about to say. She forgot that there were still guards and cooks standing around staring, with more slowly filtering in by the minute. She forgot everything but that he was kissing her again, all hunger and desperation, and the only thing that mattered was kissing him back.

  
She wasn’t sure how long it was before they broke the kiss, and she tucked herself back against his chest, closing her eyes as she felt the familiar beat of his heart against her cheek. He rested his chin on her head, his arms still tight around her.

 

“You’re never leaving again.” His voice was rough. “I don’t care what happens. Someone else can save the world; you stay with me. I’ll make it a law if I have to.”  
“Yes.” She agreed immediately.

  
“Even if it’s important Warden things.”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Someone else can do it. The Howe boy. Sigrun. You’re always getting on me about delegating things.”

  
“Yes.” She wiped at her wet face ineffectually, and one big warm hand came up to brush away her tears with a thumb. The gentle tenderness of the action was too much; she leaned almost desperately into that familiar rough, callused touch and felt tears start welling all over again. He leaned down and kissed them away, and the smile on his face was as brilliant as the one he’d had the first time he’d kissed her years ago.

  
“I got your letters.” He whispered. “I liked the last one the best.”

  
“The kingdom’s still standing.” She leaned against him, and while the edges of her armor had to be digging into uncomfortable places he showed no inclination to let her go. “I told you that you’d manage alone.”

  
“I did.” He ran a thumb over her cheek again. “But I’ve no desire ever to do it again. Oh, Lys.” He leaned in for another kiss. “I missed you.”

 

  
The longing and love in that one word nearly broke her again. She kissed him back.  
“I missed _you_.” She murmured against his lips.

  
Her armor was starting to get annoying; Elissa wanted to feel him against her. She pulled back; he protested, but when she pawed at the buckles of the baldric holding her weapons on her back on he let her go enough to work it off and drop them with a clank, something she would never normally do. Her breastplate, vambraces, elbow cops, gauntlets, pauldrons, vambraces, and gorget followed. She was working on the tasset plates at her hips when someone made a sleepy sort of sound in the same door Alistair had recently half destroyed.

  
Elissa’s head came up. Two things registered simultaneously; one was that there were probably thirty people staring at them now, from palace staff and guards to a heavy-eyed Arl Wulff, who had gone a good deal grayer in the two years since Elissa had last seen him.

  
The much more important thing, though, was the harried-looking gray-haired woman in the door, shepherding a bleary eyed young boy before her.

  
Elissa felt tears threaten again as the pair stopped dead and stared.

  
“Mum?” Duncan sounded unsure, almost disbelieving. Oh, he looked even more like his father than the last time she’d seen him, and Maker, but he must have grown nearly a foot. Elissa quite suddenly couldn’t get her throat to work. She just went down on her knees and opened her arms; her son took a few tentative steps, and then she saw him break down, and he practically ran the last few steps into her arms.

 

She clung to him just as desperately as she had clung to Alistair a minute ago. “My brave little warrior.” She whispered. “Did you look after your father like I asked?”

  
There was a scuffling of paws, and then Duncan’s nanny was practically knocked sprawling. Elissa barely had time to brace herself before a hundred and fifty pounds of ecstatic mabari slammed into her, knocking both her and Duncan flat. Pip wuffed happily and licked her face, his stub of a tail whipping back and forth in a blur. Elissa ruffled his ears. “Good boy.” She was smiling so much that her face hurt. “ _Good boy_.”

  
Pip panted and whined happily, and licked her face again. Elissa shoved him back enough to sit up again, and he flopped down and laid his head on her knee, panting happily, his tail wagging furiously.

Duncan pulled back slightly. “You’re home? You’re home, mum?” His tone was almost pleading, and Elissa felt her heart break a little.

  
“Yes.” Elissa knew that she was smiling and nearly crying again at the same time, and that she must look a right sight, but she couldn’t find it in her to care. “Yes.”

  
“Right!” Somewhere above her, Alistair was waving his hands at the still-gathering crowd. “I know this must be most fascinating, but I would kindly like to ask you all to shove right off now. No offense, Arl. I would like some _privacy_ for _private family things_ , thank you very much. Oh. Wulff? That meeting tomorrow? Sorry, but it’s cancelled. We’ll move it to the day after tomorrow, or maybe the day after that. You understand.”

  
“I very much do, your majesty.” Elissa could actually hear the grin on the Arl’s face. “I can spend another day or two eating your food and drinking your wine, I suppose.”  
“Good. Right! All of you! Back to whatever you were doing!”

  
A general scuffling of feet as the mess hall emptied. Elissa knew that by morning, the news of the Queen’s return would be all over Denerim and probably halfway to the Free Marches. There would be questions and greetings and more questions, and right now she didn’t care about any of it.

  
Alistair sat down beside her, and with a gentle tug pulled both of them into his lap, wrapping his arms around her again. Elissa went happily, shifting to try not to dig the armor she was still wearing into anything tender. Pip shifted to keep drooling happily on her knee, and Elissa closed her eyes and leaned against her husband and hugged her son and was _happy_.

  
They sat there for a long few minutes, none of them saying anything. Duncan squirmed free at last, at nine too old to suffer his mother’s affections for long, even on such an occasion as this  
“We should put him back to bed.” Alistair said at last.

  
There was a tone to his voice that Elissa recognized; it said and then I can have you to myself.

  
Duncan puffed up indignantly; this was clearly a long-standing point of contention. “I can go to bed on my own. I’m almost nine.”  
Elissa reluctantly got to her feet. “Not even to indulge a mother who’s missed you very, very much?”

  
Duncan hesitated. “Well. Maybe.” He looked up at her, and suddenly looked very unsure and very vulnerable. “You’ll…you’ll still be here in the morning, won’t you?”

  
Elissa felt that like a punch to the gut. “Yes.” She nearly choked on the word. “I will. I promise.”

  
_Tomorrow and every day for many, many years._

 

* * *

 

An hour later, and she was back in her bedroom, their bedroom. The blankets had been thrown nearly off of the bed, and the nightstand on Alistair’s side of the bed had been knocked askew. She smiled, and joy swelled in her chest until she thought she must burst.

  
 _Home_.

  
She stripped off the rest of her armor, peeled off her gambeson, trousers, and tunic. There was a tub of hot water; Elissa vowed to give the head housekeeper a raise. The woman had maintained a habit of having a hot bath made ready for the Queen whenever she returned from one of her ‘adventures’ since her coronation. Apparently that hadn’t changed.

  
Alistair had vanished, apparently to finish canceling whatever plans he’d had for the morning. Elissa sank into the hot water with a sigh of relief.

  
She’d just finished washing her hair when she heard voices approaching. She recognized Alistair and Eamon immediately.

  
“…all due respect, your majesty, but you can’t just cancel the Council…” Eamon.

  
“I bloody well _can_.” Alistair sounded irritated. “And I bloody well _did_. I wasn’t asking for your permission or agreement, Eamon. I was telling you a fact. Unless there is a war or a Blight or the castle is on fire, _no one_ had better disturb us.”

  
“But…”

  
“I know your feelings on my wife very well.” Alistair’s voice was edging towards anger now. They sounded as if they’d stopped right outside the door; Elissa listened with interest. “You’ve made them clear enough over the last year. Eamon, you’re a clever man and I value your perspective on political matters, but this is not a matter for debate. “

  
Elissa grinned. _Eamon, you clever snake…you never did get the pliant puppet King you wanted, did you? And you always did blame me for that. The puppy grew teeth, didn’t he? Just like I always knew he could. Have you been hoping that without my bad influence he’d be a bit more malleable? Ha._

 _“_ …yes, your majesty.”

  
Footsteps heading away, and the door creaked open. Alistair strode through; he was scowling. Both the scowl and that little furrow between his eyebrows that he got when he was irritated smoothed away almost immediately upon seeing her. He stopped dead, staring, and a slow smile spread across his face instead.

  
“Maker’s breath.” His voice was soft. “But I have missed seeing this.”

  
“I missed you.” Elissa was quite sure that she couldn’t say those words enough. “But…I’m glad you weren’t with me. I’m glad you were here. Not…not anywhere near Orlais.” She shivered slightly, despite the warm water and warm fire.

  
The furrow returned, but this time with the little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that meant worry rather than irritation. “Oh, Maker.” He crossed the room with a few long strides and sank to his knees next to the copper tub. “I had hoped…I’d hoped you were far away from that.” He cupped her face in his hands, and rested his forehead against hers.

  
“You didn’t hear it?” She shuddered again at the memory of those voices, that song that had haunted her dreams and wound itself into the waking world.

  
A long moment of silence was answer enough for her. She shifted to press as close to him as their slightly awkward positions would allow. He drew her against him; water sloshed as she moved to lean against his shoulder.

  
“I’m sorry.” She said, very softly. “Oh, love…I hoped…I hoped you were far enough away. It…” She shivered again.

  
“I didn’t until I had to come west to Redcliffe.” Alistair’s voice was quiet. “I don’t think I got a solid night of sleep for three weeks, until we were back east of South Reach.” A rueful sort of chuckle. “I’m afraid I was a bit snappish to the Lady Inquisitor, but she’s a remarkably gracious woman.” The arm around her shoulders tightened. “Before you ask…your Wardens at Vigil’s Keep didn’t hear it.”

  
“I worried about all of you.” Elissa reached up to link her fingers with his. “You, in particular.”

  
That drew a soft chuckle. “Oh, Lys. That’s why I love you, you know.” The arm around her shoulders tightened, and he pressed a kiss to her wet hair. “You worried about me. While you were out Maker knows where fighting Maker knows what, and hearing a false Calling sent out by one of the original darkspawn magisters. You worried about me. Sitting here in my castle, wondering if I should have the chicken or pork for dinner.”

  
She tilted her head to look up at him; he was smiling down at her, with those little laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. “A High Dragon. I had to fight a High Dragon.” She smiled back. “Amongst other things. It dented my armor and everything.”

  
He chuckled again, and she tilted her head a bit more and shifted up those last few inches to kiss him.

  
It turned heated, very quickly. It had been so long, too long, and she wanted him with a sudden intensity that made her breath hitch and head swim. She wound her fingers into his hair and kissed him with two years of longing and desperation. Alistair made a sound deep in his chest that she felt more than heard, and before she knew what was happening he was on his feet, pulling her up with him. Water sluiced off of her, and he pulled back just for a moment, staring down at her body. There was a hungry look in his eyes that she knew, that she’d missed so, so much.  
Without a word, he swept her up into his arms, took a few steps, and all but threw her down on the bed. Elissa practically whimpered when the familiar, beloved weight of his body pressed against her, and she scrabbled at his shirt with the desperation of a madwoman.

  
His hands and lips were everywhere, and he wouldn’t let go of her long enough to get his blasted shirt properly off. She ran her hands up underneath it to dig her fingernails into the muscles of his back…still sharply defined, even after all these years; Alistair still trained every day with her or the palace guards, Elissa knew. He groaned something unintelligible against her breast, and she actually whimpered as the sound went straight down her spine to add to the heat pooling in her lower belly.

  
His trousers were only loosely laced. A minute of frantic tugging had them undone and shoved down out of the way. Elissa reached down to guide him in; his breath hitched and his head fell forward when she wrapped her hand around him.

  
“Maker, Lys.” His voice was little more than a groan. “I…it’s been…” And then everything lined up perfectly, and whatever he’d been about to say trailed off into a wordless, ecstatic moan as he surged forward and buried himself to the hilt.

  
It had been a very long time, and while she was wet and ready for him the sudden intrusion still hurt, almost like their first time so long ago. Elissa made a little involuntary sound of shock and pain; he froze, though she could see the strain of not moving on his face.

  
“Lys?” His voice was nearly unrecognizable. Under her hands, his muscles were tense and trembling. “Are you…”

  
She pressed her hips up against him and wrapped her legs around his waist. She dug her nails into his back again, willing him to move, already. “Don’t _stop_. _Please_ don’t stop.”

  
He slid one hand up her thigh to her hip, and even that simple caress left her nerves tingling. His other hand fisted in the sheets next to her head, and his teeth closed over her earlobe as he started to move.

  
Elissa clung to him, her head falling back as the sheer pleasure of having him again, of feeling him against her and inside her became almost too much. The brief pain faded, and then there was only the exquisitely pleasurable feeling of him filling her, the sweet slide of his flesh in hers as he thrust.

  
“Maker.” He groaned the word again as she shifted her hips to let him get even deeper. “ _Lys_ …ah! Oh, love, I…. _Lys_!”

  
She couldn’t answer. The only thing that still existed or mattered was the fast building fire in her belly, the feel of his hands on her body and his lips on her neck. She was moaning now with every thrust, nearly insensible as everything built higher and higher.

  
His thrusts were losing rhythm, were growing hard and irregular and desperate. He was making all of those delicious little sounds she’d always loved so much, and then it was all too much.  
She cried out something that might have been his name, and then was shuddering helplessly as the pleasure crested and broke. He groaned, long and low, and the hand on her thigh tightened. Under her hands, she felt the muscles of his back tense, and then he was muffling his own cry against the skin of her neck as his hips moved a few more times, sharp and hard as he spent himself.

  
He caught himself on one arm as he collapsed against her, keeping most of his weight off of her. She kept her legs wrapped around him; they were both sweating and panting as if they’d spent half the day in the training ring.

  
“I have really, really, _really_ missed _that_.” He mumbled at last.

  
She smiled, and arched up to kiss him on the underside of the jaw. He made a contented little noise and rolled off of her at last, pulling her along with him so that she ended up pressed against his side, her head on his shoulder. “No royal mistress on the side to tide you over?” She tilted her head up to look at him; there was a shadow of stubble on his jaw, and a new scar on his left cheek. She lifted a hand to run a thumb over it. “I heard that Celene was interested in securing relations between Ferelden and Orlais.”

  
He shot her a look of such utter horror that she had to laugh. “Oh, Maker.” He shuddered. “Don’t say such things, woman. I’d sooner take a basket of vipers to bed. I think it’d be safer.”  
Elissa laughed harder, a laugh that came from her belly and kept going until she couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t laughed like that in far, far too long, and it felt good to do it again. “You’re not wrong about that, love.”

  
“It was bad enough having to dance with her.” He grimaced. “Orlesians. They’re just so…so…Orlesian. Never say anything straight, and they wear those stupid masks and stupid frilly shirts. I’m pretty sure that if she sold one of those masks of hers she could feed the poor in Halamshiral for a year.” A disgusted sort of sound. “And they look down on me for thinking that there are better uses for gold than putting it on my shoes.”

  
He looked down at her, and his face softened. “Besides…why would I want anyone else? I already have you.”

  
“I don’t know.” Elissa clung to him a little more tightly, as that familiar old flutter of worry twisted in her belly. “I was gone for _two years_.” _And I’m still not sure you can forgive me for that so easily…_

  
A hand under her chin, and he tilted her face up. She searched his face, almost fearfully, but he just smiled that same familiar, beloved lopsided grin at her that had first done funny things to her heart back at Ostagar, so long ago.

 

“I knew you might be.” He said quietly. “We discussed it before you left, remember?”

  
“And you didn’t want me to go.”

  
“No. But I understood why you had to.” A kiss on her forehead. “I still wish I could have gone with you, is all. But you were right; I had to stay. I always knew you’d come back.” Another kiss, this time on her lips and far slower. “And I knew you’d find it.” He drew back, and gave her another fond smile. “My beautiful, impossible wife. I knew you’d find it.”

  
Elissa felt a tension she’d been carrying for a very long time melt away. “Once you take it, you might wish I hadn’t.” She laid her head back on his shoulder, closing her eyes. “You’ll be sick as a dog for two or three days. And it isn’t really a cure. More...a treatment, I suppose. You’ll still carry the Taint. You’ll still be a Warden. But it sort of turns back the clock, so to speak.” She felt her belly growl just then. “Just like you were after your Joining.”

  
He felt it too, and started laughing. “Oh, the cooks are going to just hate us, aren’t they? More than they already do, anyway.”

  
“Very much.” Her stomach growled again, more insistently.

  
He chuckled, and extricated himself from her embrace. Elissa protested, but he did his trousers back up and padded barefoot over to the bedroom door, opened it a crack, stuck his head out, and called “Oi!”

  
A moment of silence, and then the clank clank clank of one of the royal guards hurrying down the hall at a jog. “Sire?”

  
“Send word down to the kitchens, would you? The Queen is hungry. See if they have any of those little raspberry tarts left from dinner.”

  
“Sire!” The clanking faded back down the hall. Alistair returned to bed, shucking his shirt along the way at last.

  
Elissa draped herself against his side, pillowing her head in the hollow of his shoulder and tracing her fingers through the dusting of dark blonde hair on his chest. She reached up and touched the new scar on his cheek again.

  
“Do I want to know?” She arched an eyebrow.

  
He chuckled. “I’d like to say it was a grand heroic battle, but really I was sparring with Marron and he caught me a lucky one with one of the wooden swords.”

  
“Ah.” Elissa couldn’t help but grin as she pictured the look on Marron’s face after _that_.

  
Alistair grinned back. “You should have seen him! I thought he was going to have a heart attack and die right there on the spot. I told him it was just a scratch…Maker knows, I’ve gotten worse…but he was still trying to resign his post right there. ‘ _The captain of the King’s Guard is supposed to protect him, not bloody well lay his face open!’_ ” Another chuckle. “And then he yelled at me for dropping my guard. I had to beat him into the dirt four more times before he’d stop lecturing. Speaking of.” He touched the scar on her chin; the thin line was starting to fade from pink to silvery.

  
“Bar fight.” Elissa said promptly. “Or sort of. Some idiots in the Anderfels decided it would be a great idea to sneak into my room one night in an inn, cut my throat, and rob me blind. Didn’t have time to get my helmet on.” She grimaced. “And had to pay the innkeeper triple the next morning for cleanup and damage to the room.” She traced her hands down the strong lines of his arm, and paused at a patch of skin on his forearm marked with the slightly raised, discolored marks of a recently healed burn.

“Venatori infiltrated the kitchen staff about eight months back.” Alistair’s grin this time took on a sharp edge. “I don’t think they realized or remembered that I trained as a Templar. Of course, they are Tevinter, so they probably didn’t realize what southern Templars can do, even ones who never took their vows or started taking lyrium. Still, one of them got a fireball off before I dropped a Holy Smite on them.” He flexed his arm. “Just grazed me and I had my dragonbone plate on, fortunately. It took a good chunk out of the wall behind me.”

  
Elissa sat bolt upright at that. “They what?” She hissed under her breath, angry.

  
“Mmm. As far as my people or the Inquisition…Leliana and the Inquisitor sent people to help dig them out and figure out what they were up to…could make out, they were supposed to pass military secrets back to Corypheus and assassinate me and Duncan.” His eyes glinted dangerously. “It didn’t quite work out how they hoped.”

  
Elissa’s sword hand flexed. She hissed again. “I am having words with our spymaster.”

  
“I already did.” Alistair’s voice was uncharacteristically hard. “We have a new one. Leliana recommended him personally. Fortunately, from what I hear the Inquisition has more or less broken any hold the Venatori had outside Tevinter. Which is good, because otherwise I’d be hunting them down and running them out of Ferelden personally right now, and however much fun that might sound like I would have missed you getting home.”

  
“And that would have been bad.”

  
“Exactly.”

  
Elissa let him tug her back down, still scowling. “I wish I’d known. I could have thanked the Lady Inquisitor in person. Remind me to send Leliana a barrel of that Rivani red she liked so much last time she was here.”

  
“Mmm.” Alistair pulled her on top of him. “Noted. Relax, love. I’m fine. Duncan’s fine. The Venatori are somewhere at the bottom of Denerim bay. No going off to single handedly invade Tevinter, if you please. I’m not done with you yet.”

  
“If I invade Tevinter, I’ll let you come along.” She put the thought of botched assassination attempts out of her head for the moment, and pressed her backside back against him.

  
“ _Now_ you’re talking. The empire won’t stand a chance.” His voice went husky as she slid a hand down his chest and bent down to nibble at his earlobe.


End file.
